A Cautionary Tale for Investors: Boxabl Maxes $3.65 Million Campaign in 8 Hours

This record-setting raise left lots of investors wanting more.

Boxabl is the king of the equity crowdfunding market right now. Not only is it one of the few companies ever to max out the $75 million Reg A limit, it doesn't stop there. They also launched a Reg CF campaign to fill the rest of the investor interest, and that $3.65 million campaign managed to max out in just 8 hours. Even more incredible is that the Reg CF campaign managed to garner a waitlist of over $5 million within 24 hours of maxing out. The momentum is absolutely wild, and as an investor in Boxabl, it’s awesome to see how much interest and support there is for the company.

Despite raising nearly $80 million, the brand new Reg CF campaign had $5 million worth of people still wanting to invest on the waitlist. There’s a cautionary tale in here for investors: Don’t wait until the absolute last minute. I understand the time value of money is important, and if all things are equal, it’s best to hold your money for an extra month or two if you can. Personally, if I am going to invest in a company, and there isn’t an early bird bonus or anything, I will wait till the end or when it’s closer to maxing out before investing. This is becoming increasingly less common with the introduction of stackable bonuses on StartEngine. However, it seems ALOT of people are waiting way too close to the deadline to invest. While Boxabl did raise an incredible $29 million on StartEngine, that was over several months, and there was plenty of time for anyone that wanted to invest to actually get in on the deal.

I noted in previous articles that one of the biggest issues in equity crowdfunding is getting people to invest ‘mid-campaign.’ In many instances, most of the total amount raised is during the first and last week of a campaign, which means companies might sit around for months trying to incrementally increase their total campaign commitments. This makes it difficult for founders to gauge, for example, if they need to end a $4 million campaign (of a total goal of $5 million) in, say, 2 weeks because they think they can max out the rest of the money by then. If they don’t gauge it well, they could leave money on the table.

Obviously, this issue goes away when companies launch with a lot of momentum because the company simply maxes out the raise quickly. However, those race to the cap table raises are few and far between. Personally, I don’t think it’s because there are not good companies that ‘deserve’ the money, but rather it’s just not very common for raises to max out so quickly, and thus not enough people have gotten burned from waiting too long. The urgency isn’t there, so it tends to drag things out quite a bit which becomes the norm.

Nonetheless, seeing the $5 million waitlist might be a sign this is changing.